WIUX : Pure Student Radio

Directly after an inspired performance at Bloomington’s John Waldron Arts Center on Friday, October 5th, I had a chance to talk a bit with Justin Rice and Christian Rudder, the creative duo behind Bishop Allen, for WIUX.

John: Do you want to introduce yourselves?

Justin: Sure. I’m Justin Rice, and I sing and play guitar and sometimes piano in Bishop Allen.

Christian: I’m Christian Rudder, and I’m also in Bishop Allen.

John: How has the tour been going so far? Has Bloomington been treating you well?

Christian: The show was awesome.

Justin: Yeah, we just finished playing at the Waldron Arts Center, and we didn’t really know what to expect when we walked in there, but it actually turned out to be a really, the feeling was really nice. The crowd was great, and everyone was really responsive and it was sort of like a controlled, nice, happy environment. And in general, Bloomington’s been great. I mean, we haven’t ventured too far from this downtown area here, and it doesn’t seem like we have to. Like, there’s a lot going on down here. We played down here, we’re staying down here. There’s been time to walk around and stretch our legs. It’s been great.

John: It was a seated venue, but everyone was really into it.

Christian: Yeah, it had a really good energy for us. You know, sometimes college shows aren’t great when they’re seated, but this was good.

John: Yeah. So after your EP project last year, you signed with the relatively new Bloomington label Dead Oceans, and I’m sure you had a lot of offers and I was wondering what made you choose Dead Oceans over the other competition?

Christian: We really liked the guy who runs it, Phil Waldorf, and also Chris Swanson. They both seemed like really smart, hardworking guys, and honestly, that’s all you could ever really ask for, I think, in a label.

Justin: They came to us with a pretty well thought-out plan as far as what they wanted to do with the record, and they seemed to be receptive to our ideas. And they also are our fans and…

Christian: Yeah, yeah, they seemed perfect for us so it just worked out.

John: Could you tell me about OkCupid.com?

Christian: It’s a dating website that I started with some friends of mine about four years ago, and, I mean, Bishop Allen is what I do full-time but I still talk to them.

John: Have you done any other websites?

Christian: Yeah, with those same people, three years before that, so like 1999, I worked at this place called TheSpark.com and SparkNotes. So yeah, we did those things.

John: So you wrote SparkNotes for books?

Christian: No, that was the business of the website, but I had a different job where I ran this other URL called TheSpark.com and did other things.

Justin: It was funny.

Christian: Yeah, I was the internet humorist. So yeah, that was my job.

Justin: An American internet humorist.

Christian: Yeah, an American internet humorist just for the record. Yes.

John: This next question is for both of you. When did you start becoming interested in acting?

Justin: We lived with a guy named Andrew Bujalski. He actually lived with us in an apartment on Bishop Allen Drive, which is what we took the name of the band from in I think Cambridge, Massachusetts. And, you know, Andrew basically asked us to be in his movies and wrote parts with us in mind, and because he was a friend, and because working on projects with friends tends to be a good thing to do, we agreed to do it. At least for me, you know, it’s not like something that I think about or that I worked on or that I trained for or that I aspired to do, really. I mean, it really was because of Andrew, and because, you know, working with him was sort of an interesting and necessary experience. And it’s been good.

Christian: We’re shooting two new movies.

Justin: Yeah, after Andrew’s movies came out, you know, they sort of simmered for a long time, and people are even now finally getting around to actually finally watching them, which is strange because when we shot them, I don’t think anyone ever expected anyone outside of our group of friends to actually really watch them. But now that that’s happening, a lot more people are trying to get us to be in movies. And there’s a girl with bunny ears behind us playing with a shopping cart. I mean a teenager with bunny ears. They’re having good teenage kicks.

John: Well, there’s a new movie coming. Well, I don’t know how new it is, but the newest one to be released I guess is –

Justin: Let Them Chirp Awhile?

John: Yeah.

Justin: Yeah, I shot that a year ago in October, and it takes a while to finish those kinds of projects that aren’t funded by a studio and don’t have distribution in place, and basically, he finished editing it and now it’s kicking around the film festivals, and its life is just beginning. And you never know. I mean, maybe people will watch it or maybe people won’t. I hope they do.

John: What’s it about?

Justin: It’s about sort of a frustrated screenwriter in New York City and his imaginary world.

John: Okay. So when did you both become interested in music?

Christian: Do you mean like when did we first start being in bands?

John: Well, I guess it’s kind of an open-ended question.

Christian: Yeah.

John: I guess what I’m trying to ask is what draws you to music and why do you do it?

Christian: That’s a hard question to answer.

John: I know, sorry.

Christian: But I mean, you know, I got my first cassette tape in I was like 15 which I guess is pretty late, and I just kind of got into it. I got a guitar a couple years later and just started playing it. And then I met Justin so yeah, my musical life is very tied to this relationship. You know, I’m not sure if I would do it otherwise.

Justin: Yeah, it’s the same for me. There was not really a point in my life where I thought, “Oh, well, what I want to grow up to be is a musician.” For me, when I was really little I wanted to write. I wanted to write books. And I like writing, and I think that for me, it just turned out that writing songs was… It kind of made sense. I like thinking in terms of songs, and I like trying to sort of work within the structure that a pop song mandates. And I like the fact that you can write something that’s actually going to be listened to out-loud as opposed to read on a page. There’s a certain kind of life that songwriting has because you perform it and you say it. You give it meaning through melody and through delivery, which actually, it turns out, I really like. And that was something that I didn’t necessarily know. I think that what keeps me doing it is that I like thinking that way, and I like writing.

John: On the new album, The Broken String, 9 of the songs are more developed or reworked versions of songs from your EP’s. As you play these songs live do they continue to evolve and develop, or is it more like those are the final versions?

Christian: They definitely do, a song like “Rain” for instance, which isn’t a reworked version of an EP song, but one that we have had in our repertoire for a while. You know, its live form is totally different from the LP version. And actually, I feel like most of the songs are like that. “Corazon” is another song like that although we didn’t play that tonight. It definitely has a different vibe than it did on The Broken String and that, in turn, is different from the EP version. And, you know, I think that’s mostly because you have to go with what’s working at the moment and what works live. Especially for a band that takes a lot of time in the studio like us, it can be very different than what works on a record.

Justin: You know, I also like the idea that songs are something that have a life outside of one version. Multiple versions of the song can exist and they can sort of like take different shapes and mean different things at different times. I mean, I don’t think there’s just one absolute platonic version of a song that exists and all other things are just like perversions of that. I think, you know, songs change and there are songs where they sort of, we do them basically based on what we think is working, and that changes from day to day. And I think that’s good because it keeps it alive. I think of it kind of like “Wave of Mutilation”, a Pixies song, there’s like the version that’s on the album and there’s the Pump up the Volume soundtrack version. And those are two drastically different versions of the song, and the idea that one of those is right and one of those is wrong or one of those is better… I mean, sometimes I like one better and sometimes I like the other. And I like the idea that that song can work in different ways, and I think that’s true for most good songs.

John: Yeah, it seems like you can get more ideas out of it if you stretch it different ways.

Justin: Yeah… yeah.

John: So have you thought at all about your next album?

Christian: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we want to start working on it. We’ve been touring a lot this year since we had a record coming out, and we go to Europe soon after we get done with this tour, but then when we get back in January, I think our number one priority is to write and record the next record in February and March, as long as it takes obviously.

Justin: We want it to have like a little bit of a weirder feel I think, and also a little less polished.

Christian: Yeah.

Justin: And I want to feel, I like things that feel homemade in a way. And definitely one of the things that we wanted to do is that like it should have a distinct personality that comes from us, kind of really making it ourselves. We were talking about trying to rent a house in the off-season, like on the beach in the middle of winter when there’s nobody else around and working on it there. I like the idea of being out there and sort of having that environment somehow inform the songs a little bit. So, we’re kind of working towards doing that.

Christian: I mean, with the way recording equipment is priced, it just makes a little more sense sometimes.

John: Do you think that you would ever work in any of the extra songs from the EP’s onto the next album or is that done?

Christian: I mean, never say never I guess, but certainly, that’s the last thing on our list. You know, if some lightning bolt of inspiration hits us regarding one of those songs, I wouldn’t say it would be categorically excluded, but certainly our goal, and almost certainly what will happen is that it will be 12, 13, 14 new songs.

Justin: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing we learned from making the EP’s and then making The Broken String is that it’s a lot more rewarding to make new songs, to write songs. And I think that we both enjoy the process of actually writing new songs, and it’s important to keep it moving, you know?

John: How is life in New York City? Is it a big inspiration?

Justin: For me, yeah. For me in New York City, first of all, I think walking is a really great time to write songs, because when you’re walking around, it’s like you’re sort of stimulated by things around you and you’re moving through the world. You’re experiencing some things, but, you know, your mind is pretty free to sort of wander. And New York City is one of the best places in the world for walking around, especially for walking around and seeing lots of stuff going on around you. So, yeah, because of that, there’s like tons of inspiration and there are specific examples of things in New York City that have inspired us, like the song “The Monitor” which is inspired by the fact that there is an old iron works at the end of the street that I live on where they built, where they clad the [USS] Monitor from the Civil War with its iron plates. And down the street from me, there was a giant warehouse fire that inspired the song “The Same Fire” or, you know, “Click, Click, Click, Click” was sort of written based on the experiences that we had living in a Puerto Rican neighborhood for a long time. And so there are also very specific things about New York that have inspired songs.

John: It seems like a lot of your songs are inspired by your life experiences, very specific ones.

Justin: Yeah, yeah, a lot of them are. It just makes sense to me that that’s something to write about. Sometimes I feel like they’re kind of like essays. Like something happens, and I try to figure out why I care about it. Like there’s something interesting in the world, something that intrigues me, something that’s strangely compelling, and writing a song is sort of about trying to figure out why it’s interesting, and articulating it in some way. Sometimes the songs are just total fiction too.

Christian: Yeah, you have to get that in there.

Justin: And sometimes, they’re self-fulfilling prophecies.

John: I have one final question that might of interest the ladies. Do you have an innie or an outtie? Or would you prefer not answer and keep it a mystery?

Justin: Umm, I guess I have an outtie.

Christian: I have kind of an innie-outtie.

Justin: I’ve got one of those. Yeah, I think I have a total outtie.

John: I have one of those two, the innie-outtie thing. It just happens sometimes.

Christian: It does.

John: Well, that’s all I have. Thanks for your time!

Justin: Thank you very much, thanks for doing this.

For more information on Bishop Allen, here is their official website. ( www.bishopallen.com )